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Category Archives: t-shirts

Not a massive update this time around as we’re still waiting for our TORCHE – Meanderthal LPs to arrive for true chaos to begin. In the meantime though, the band passed through town last week and dropped off a few tour-only t-shirts for us to sell. Once these sell out, that’s it for their availability, as we won’t be re-printing these designs (mostly drawings used within Meanderthal).

Over the past week or so we also got some new releases and crucial restocks for the Robotic Empire Online Store from No Idea, Code of Ethics, and KNVBI amongst others. Ash From Sweat is a new label we decided to carry as the packaging and overall presentation on some of these releases is completely over-the-top! A good variety of tunes too. In addition to all that, Deep Six released some new colored vinyl and Zeep Soap dropped off some new soaps for your naturally-fragranced grooming needs. Top not stuff!

Also, we know some folks are eagerly awaiting our new releases, and we are too. Because we don’t do pre-orders or hold copies of our releases for people, please just keep an eye out for more updates from us. Our mailing list subscribers are amongst the first to know about our new releases, website updates, etc. Please sign up if you’re anxiously awaiting any of our upcoming releases. Here’s the current status of things coming out in the very near future:

BATTLE OF MICE / JESU – Split 12″ and CDThese are shipping from the pressing plants this week and will be made available on or around August 12th. Both formats have the same music (2 exclusive songs from each band) and are being sold separately for a change. This will also be available on iTunes and other legit digital download locations.

HELMS ALEE – Night Terror 12″Hoping to have this one available on August 12th as well but we’ll see if we meet our distributor’s deadline of July 30th or not. Fingers crossed! If not, this won’t be available for an additional few weeks but will be worth it either way. Two album tracks have *just* been posted, and a couple others from the demo (found here) have been re-recorded for the album. Killer debut album overall, CD version on Hydra Head available August 5th too.

TORCHE – Meanderthal 12″We are still waiting for our copies of this to be assembled and are at the mercy of those assembling this beast. Some stores and online distros may have these available before we do, but we will have them for sale ourselves the very day they arrive here. In the meantime the band (on tour with BORIS) is the best place to get this release on vinyl for now. The CD version is currently available from Hydra Head.

VERSE EN COMA – Rialto 10″+CD (both formats together)This is done and turned out awesome. We will have these available for sale on or around August 12th. A second track has just been posted on the band’s myspace page. Check it out!

That’s it for now… please check out the Robotic Empire Online Store for all our latest releases and distro items… and for anyone who missed the ISIS – Live IV 2xLP last time around, there’s still copies available on colored vinyl for those who’re interested. Thanks!

It’s been a couple of weeks since the release of the CANNABIS CORPSE Tube Of The Resinated 12″ but the response has been pretty awesome! Thanks to everyone who’s ordered, and we still have copies available in the Robotic Empire Online Store for those who missed it. In related celebration of its release, we re-printed CANNABIS CORPSE‘s first t-shirt design, aptly titled “Skullbong”. Yep, it’s a crucial image of a bong made out of a gnarly skull, with generally evil shit surrounding it. We made these in Youth Large all the way through Double Extra Large… those and all other CANNABIS CORPSE items can be found here.

Another batch of t-shirts we’ve printed up are for CAPSULE, who recently got home from a massive full-US tour with FURNACE. They blew through their band copies of these shirts at last weekend’s Dude Fest, so the Robotic Empire Online Store is the best place to pick up CAPSULE shirts for now. To make up for not getting our shit together to make another Robotic Empire Limited T-Shirt Series shirt for this month, we decided to tye-die some of the supersoft, grey CAPSULE shirts instead. The results are varied but all-in-all these turned out pretty badass, and are available on one of the most comfortable shirts out there. All CAPSULE items we carry can be found here.

On the distro end, we’ve got some solid stoner jams from new Belgian label Electric Earth (who just had a baby boy and named him Thor, which rules!). Aside from that, their releases are top notch in quality so check them out. After literally begging and pleading, we finally got the HELMS ALEE 1-sided 12″ from Rome Plow and this thing is incredible. It’s got a burly etching on the B-side and every element of it has some hand-screened artwork (including the poly bag)! This preludes the impressive Night Terror album we are releasing for HELMS ALEE later this year. Hydra Head’s doing the CD, we’re doing the vinyl and this band is former folk from HARKONEN, who we always felt were totally underappreciated. Oto Records in Japan released an OFF MINOR / KILLIE split 2xCD that comes in an amazing die-cut rectangular box with CDs side by side. Seriously insane packaging. Lots of new/re-stocked cassette tapes, some impressive new releases from our bros at Cavity Records (NORTH, PAULSON), limited imported vinyl, and a few other badass releases for this update:

The third installment of our Robotic Empire Limited T-Shirt Series is now available and we’re pretty stoked on how this one tuned out. Like the others before it, this comes on an American Apparel brand shirt so its hella comfortable, and also like the others before it, is limited to a one-time run of 50 shirts and features 2 colors of ink. Black and grey are found on this dark “ash” grey t-shirt with woodcut artwork of an old man (probably a wizard) playing a harp in a blacksmith shop or something. Metalheads take note: this two color t-shirt is fairly gloomy, and majorly grim. A somewhat larger photo of this can be seen here. These look killer in person, and the photos don’t really do this justice!

Long story short, we’re pumped on how this shirt turned out and still have some of the previous ones available as well. You can check out all available shirts from this limited series in our Online Store here: Robotic Empire – Limited T-Shirt Series.

While on the subject of clothing, we also re-printed a sweet TORCHE t-shirt that was originally printed as a pre-order only edition when In Return first came out. This John Baizley designed shirt was only available online for a week or so, and the band then printed a run for tour… but now that Meanderthal is out (on CD), they stopped printing these in favor of new designs. We also used the same printer the band prefers down in south Florida so the print is large and the quality of this is top notch! These can be found in our Online Store here: TORCHE – “Flies” T-Shirt.

For everyone wondering, both the CANNABIS CORPSE and TORCHE vinyl are still in production… but we hope to have Tube of the Resinated in by the end of the month, with Meanderthal hopefully following shortly. New posts will be made when these are ready as there aren’t going to be pre-orders. However, in the meantime we’ve also obtained a small amount of new items and re-stocks for the Robotic Empire Online Store over the past week or so, including the last available copies of the killer NADJA + 5/5/2000 split LP+CD on Accident Prone, some PELICAN 10″s and the impressive RINGFINGER debut… amongst other stuff.

So we figured our logo / name wasn’t on enough crap yet, and thus: the ROBOTIC EMPIRE LIMITED T-SHIRT SERIES is born. We’re making 50 t-shirts a month for the rest of the year (10 designs for 2008) that will be limited to a one-time printing. Once these 50 go, that’s it for good. They’re all being printed on fancypants American Apparel brand t-shirts so they’re maximum comfortable and you’ll actually want to wear em. Avaiable sizes are extra small (aka, youth large) up through double extra large, all in varying quantities. Enough talking, here’s the March shirt design:

It’s titled “goodbye america”, has the label name snuck in there non-abrasively, and turned out pretty damn sweet (a photo of it can be seen here). Sorta akin to the old “love virginia” design, which we also just re-printed due to mild demand and our endless love for this state.

The new Robotic Empire Online Store is generally working out great so far, and we want to thank everyone who ordered the ISIS Shades of the Swarm box set from us a week or so ago. We’ve packed and shipped about 1/2 of these so far, and are sending out UPS email notifications when each is finished. If you haven’t received one yet, expect an email with tracking information by the end of the week.

We’ve also acquired a bunch of killer new jams and re-stocked some older ones over the past few weeks since the launch of the new Online Store, including:

And finally, Robo Mailorder will shut down for a couple weeks starting this Wednesday since most of the dudes involved here will be traveling to SXSW with Torche, or to Florida for Megacon. Any orders received after Wednesday won’t ship for roughly 2 weeks… so get those orders in now if you need a new music fix. ISIS BOX SET ORDERERS: no worries, all unshipped orders will still go out by the end of the week. Thanks, peace!

RED SPAROWES debut album At The Soundless Dawn has just been re-pressed and it turned out awesome! We made 1000 more copies of this long out-of-print 2×12″ with half pressed on silver colored vinyl, and the other half pressed on clear vinyl with silver smoke. Both color variations compliment the artwork well, and here is what we initially wrote about the album back when it was first released:

“Tasteful use of space can be a rarity in modern instrumental music. Los Angeles’ RED SPAROWES debut with At The Soundless Dawn, a massive album with unconventional approaches to creating aural landscapes that prove not only tasteful, but downright outstanding. With generous hints to shoegazing’s glorious past, their subtle use of reverberating guitars not only echoes the west coast’s comforting distance of surf rock, but also helps the band fluidly transfer into darker passages that flow more like orchestral movements than modern rock songs. Their softer moments resonate in dream-like sequences that drift convincingly into heavier explosions, dismissing the predictable build-ups standardized by many bands of their ilk. It seems that no matter what pace they are playing, RED SPAROWES‘ music is always in motion… and with alumni from both NEUROSIS and ISIS on board it’s not exactly a huge surprise. At The Soundless Dawn is a seven-track, double-LP album and comes housed in a stunning gatefold jacket, helping make this nothing short of a phenomenal debut.”

Although that was written over two years ago now, it’s still completely applicable as the band really did construct an incredible first album (then continuing on to create the killer followup Every Red Heart Shines Toward The Red Sun which we also just re-pressed as a few weeks back). If you have not heard the material on this album, two MP3s from it can be heard here:

(yep, all the song titles are really long, spelling out a story basically)

Along with the recent RED SPAROWES 2xLP re-presses, we’ve also just had a big pile of new additions and restocks to our ever-growing Robotic Empire Online Store… including some sweet new t-shirts (shown above). Done by local Richmond basement-dwellers, the SLEEP Vol 2 t-shirt came in freakishly close to our own recent BLACK SABBATH / black metal tribute/parody t-shirt & hoodie entitled Blackmetal Sabbath:

We post this again as a lot of folks overlooked it in the shadows of the last update, but they turned out fucking sweet as the print is pretty much spot-on and got printed on faux American Apparel t-shirts. These along with a whole mess of new items/restocks are now available in the Robotic Empire Online Store:

Yep, another bigass update with lots of colored vinyl for all you collector freaks and new t-shirts for those more fashionable than us! Please continue to keep us busy and head on over to our Robotic Empire – Online Store… thanks and take it easy!

The dangerous and elusive budmonster Cool Dankula demands you purchase the recently re-pressed RED SPAROWES double-LP Every Red Heart Shines Toward The Red Sun! If you don’t already have this stellar 2xLP, Robotic Empire just made 1000 more and they turned out fucking sweet! The first press has been sold out for a few months and to combat the limited color vinyl debacle that happened the first time around, ALL copies of this second pressing are on colored vinyl (500 on metallic gold vinyl, 500 on clear w/ metallic gold “smoke”).

For those unfamiliar with this album, Los Angeles’ RED SPAROWES bypass the fabled sophomore slump with Every Red Heart Shines Toward The Red Sun, and it’s almost as if they skipped over an entire album with the mighty leaps and bounds they’ve made since At The Soundless Dawn came out just the year prior. The reference points of past are less reminiscent with the quintet’s progressed sound, as there is a definitely “darker” approach on this album. However, the intense evoking of emotions is still accomplished through the all-instrumental approach, with more variety and depth than ever before. It’s an impressive effort, and Robotic Empire is proud to release this double-LP vinyl version of an incredible, dynamic and downright powerful album. While RED SPAROWES somewhat rapidly attained status as an instrumental force to be reckoned with, Every Red Heart Shines Toward The Red Sun expands far beyond what they’ve accomplished before and is a captivating new path in the ever-evolving world of instrumental music.

Besides these sweet RED SPAROWES re-presses, the Robotic Empire Online Store just got a return for the last 5 copies of the first press on black vinyl, a handful of ISIS In The Absence Of Truth 2xLPs on black vinyl (also sold out otherwise) and a brand new label shirt that is a tribute (or mockery?) of both black metal, and BLACK SABBATH:

Yep, what other record label makes fun of such revered icons AND makes a sweet t-shirt out of it? And what other geniuses make their first hoodies in the summer? Robotic Empire is that label and we hope you’ll wear our stupid shirts too.

Besides our own t-shirts, we also got a shitload of new ones & restocks from Eat Death in the form of BORIS, GODFLESH, MERZBOW, SLEEP and a bunch of other sweet shirts. Include a whole mess of new items and restocks to the rapidly outdating Robotic Empire Online Store and you’ve got yourself a fairly massive update:

Hello again, this is most likely the last update from Robotic Empire before our new webstore/website launches. We’ve been busting our asses to get this up and are very excited about the progress, but have a huge update for you here in the meantime. We won’t be doing the “postage paid” thing with the new store (it’s killing us), so this is pretty much your last chance to get stuff from us and not pay shipping costs. The flipside to that is with the new site, various shipping options/vendors will be available. Blah blah blah… more on that to come, and you care about the music and not this BS, so here ya go:

TORCHE just got home from a fucking KILLER tour alongside ISIS, JESU, INTRONAUT and more. We cranked out the fully remixed n’ remastered vinyl reissue of their “Self Titled” album just in time for this monster tour and seriously, this thing turned out incredible. Pushing “full color” printing to its absolute limits, this deluxe LP comes with a glorious gatefold jacket, thick printed inner sleeve and is available on 6 different colors of vinyl. Yep, we made a shitload of colors for this one to match the rainbow of colors on the stunning gatefold jacket, and they turned out pretty much AWESOME. Pressing info won’t be made available for the time being as we’re doing a torturous little experiment here. Yep, we want you to pick up whatever color LP(s) you favor based on color alone (and not pressing quantities). Yeah yeah, we suck… we know. Get over it and enjoy this insanely heavy new mix. Here’s the colors available:

These are available now in the Robotic Empire Online Store. The CD version of this won’t be available until the summer and no other distros or anybody has this LP either, it’s just available from us and the band. For those unfortunate souls who haven’t heard the mighty TORCHE yet, they’re basically the heaviest band going right now… no lie. Absolutely crushing, they have HUGE sound with the patented “bomb string” assault for added relentlessness. This fully re-mixed and re-mastered version of their debut full-length is absolutely mammoth in sound, with insanely catchy riffs and actual harmonized singing over top it all. Total hessian heaven, and easily one of the most intense bands we’ve ever worked with. This deluxe reissue has an all new bonus track too, which totally fucking kills it. A sample MP3 of the second track “Safe” from this reissue can be heard online here.

So there’s the skinny on that… and we’ll be “nice” and release the pressing info in a couple weeks. A few months down the line the long-awaited “In Return” EP will finally see the light of day. It’s definitely worth the wait as John Baizley’s artwork for it is pretty much incredible and the final mix/master is sounding unbelievably heavy. More info on that will be available as it comes closer to completion… two tracks have been posted online here though.

Enough about how much TORCHE rules, you are probably already aware of this fact. We also got a SHITLOAD of other new stuff in… all kinds of limited and/or colored vinyl, hard to find out of print stuff, awesome new t-shirts and other nonsense. Check it out:

HOLY LORD that’s what we call a big update. OK so as we said above, this is pretty much your last chance to get your free-postage on with all the stuff we carry so please go big! The new webstore will be awesome (to say the least), but in the meantime we’re still shipping out orders almost every single day so keep em’ comin’ in and we’ll keep supplying the crazy jams to you crazy music fiends! Thanks everyone, peace!

Howdy again folks! We’ve had a crazy amount of new stuff and restocks arrive in the past 2 weeks… including some super hard to find items, rare colored vinyl, new t-shirts, weird cassettes and more.

One of the more notable packages (er… multitude of packages) that arrived was the entire back-stock of CDs and LPs from the Rhode Island label City Of Hell and the bulk of back-stock CDs from Florida’s now-defunct label Urchin. What this translates to is that Robotic Empire is now the only distributor with the old AS THE SUN SETS “Each Individual Voice” CDs and LPs, as well as the only distributor who has the ATSS/DAUGHTERS side-project CRIPPLER CROSS FACE and the highly under-distributed opus by heavy/stoner/madmen RAILSPLITTER. Long story short, we hunted down some crucial shit that’s been generally unavailable for years, and literally nobody else has for sale.

Along with that, we got a pile of new t-shirts from the rad Cali-based Warlord Clothing, including some great officially-licensed designs by SPAZZ, AT THE GATES, EYEHATEGOD and more. More shirts for the label will be coming in the following weeks (along with an entirely new webstore AND website – finally), but for now here is the full list of the last 2 weeks new additions and restocks to the Robotic Empire Online Store:

Also, we are nearly out of the ISIS – “In The Absence Of Truth” 2xLPs, as only a handful of the black vinyl copies remain. If you want one, now is the time to act as even our distributor has sold out of their copies.

Thanks for reading all of this, and expect big changes from us in the coming month or so! Peace!